chickpea “meat”balls

by request, and as a part of “meatless monday” we’re putting here a completed recipe for good chickpea meatballs. we really enjoyed them, and we hope you do too!

• take 4 cups of cooked chickpeas (or warmed canned chickpeas) and put them in a food processor with 1 cup ground oats (you can use either pre-ground oats or put some rolled oats into a coffee grinder.) process this until the chickpeas are no longer wholly visible.
• measure out 2 tsp oregano, 2 tsp thyme, 1 tsp crushed bay leaf (optional), a dash hot pepper (we have cayenne), 1 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp sea salt, and 2 tsp tarragon (we had fresh tarragon and it totally MADE this dish.) mix it all with 1 tbsp olive oil.
• put the chickpea mixture and the spices into a big bowl. slowly pour in vegetable stock as you knead everything together, making everything stick together, but not liquidy. you should end up with one big solid mass, that’s a little sticky but holds together.

at this point you can either fry them in a pan, like we did, or you could bake it in the oven, perhaps in a pan shallowly filled with tomato sauce and vegetables. good luck!